This is probably the best antho we’ve edited and we’re very proud of it. We think readers will really enjoy the heck out of it. (Also note this piece on New Weird on the Guardian blog, which is not bad. I considered commenting, but the one thing I have no wish to do is get involved in a NW discussion anything like the original one!)

New Weird is a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy. New Weird has a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects–in combination with the stimulus of influence from New Wave writers or their proxies (including also such forebears as Mervyn Peake and the French/English Decadents). New Weird fictions are acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise, but not always overtly political. As part of this awareness of the modern world, New Weird relies for its visionary power on a “surrender to the weird” that isn’t, for example, hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in Antarctica. The “surrender” (or “belief”) of the writer can take many forms, some of them even involving the use of postmodern techniques that do not undermine the surface reality of the text.

Wow! That’s interesting. Officially, it’s somewhere between mid-February and March 1, but in general for indie presses the official release date is often a guess–in part because you have to kind of predict when the books will get to warehouses and then to the bookstores. Nice to see it out in the wild, though! JV

Hi Jeff. Picked it up yesterday, so it’s definitely out. The Intro took me back, I recall contributing to that TTA thread way back when. There have certainly been anthologies based on manifestos and the like, but is there another that takes as its key inspirational moment a message board thread? This may be an Internet first! Looks like quite an interesting selection of pieces, look forward to reading it.

Gabriel M

About Jeff VanderMeer

Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Jeff VanderMeer's most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), released in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Foreign rights have sold in 17 countries and the movie rights have been acquired by Paramount Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions. His latest nonfiction books include Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction (Abrams Image). His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Atlantic.com, Vulture.com, and the Los Angeles Times. VanderMeer recently taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference and has lectured at MIT and the Library of Congress. You can contact him at pressinfo at vandermeercreative.com. (Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.) More...